<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 20TH QUESTION OJAI, CALIFORNIA 4TH QUESTION & ANSWER MEETING 15TH MAY 1980 'FRAGMENTATION'</TITLE>
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<FONT size=5 color=black><B>QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 20TH QUESTION OJAI, CALIFORNIA 4TH QUESTION & ANSWER MEETING 15TH MAY 1980 'FRAGMENTATION'</B></FONT><br><br><br><DIV class='PP2'>Question: Can we die, psychologically, to the self?  To find out is a process of choiceless awareness.  In order to observe choicelessly, it seems we must have ended or died to the ego,`me'. The question is: How can I observe, in my current state of fragmentation?  It is like the `I' trying to see the `I'.  This is an impossible paradox; please clarify.
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Do not quote me - or anybody - for then it is not yours and you become a secondhand human being, which we all are.  That is the first thing to realize, because that distorts our thinking.  We are the result of millions of years of the pressure of other people's thinking and propaganda.  If one is not free of all that, one can never find the origin of things.
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The questioner asks: How can I observe in my current state of fragmentation?  You cannot.  But you can observe your fragmentation. In observing yourself you discover that you are looking with certain prejudices.  And you forget to look at yourself and go into the question of prejudice.  You become aware of your prejudice; can you look at it without any sense of distortion, without choice?  Just observe the prejudices; let prejudice tell you the story, not you tell the story about prejudice; let prejudice unroll itself; the cause of prejudice, the image, conclusions and opinions.
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So you begin to discover in looking at prejudice that you are fragmented and that that fragmentation is brought about by thought; naturally, therefore, you begin to be aware of the movement of thought.
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You are confused; what is this confusion?  Who has created this confusion, in you and outside of you?  Observing confusion, you begin to be aware of the movement of thought, of the contradictory nature of thought; let the whole thing unroll itself as you watch.
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The story is there but you do not read the story; you are telling the book what it should say.  It is not that it is the history of yourself; it is the history of mankind.  You cannot have insight if it is merely the response of memory.  Organized religion is not religion.  All the nonsense that goes on, the rituals, dogmas, theories and the theologians spinning out new theories - that is not religion.  Now what makes one say that it is not religion?  Is it merely a thoughtful examination of all the religions, their dogmas, their superstitions, their rituals, their ignorance, and saying at the end of it, "This is nonsense"?  Or is it that one sees immediately that any form of propaganda or pressure, is never a religion?  One sees this immediately and therefore one is out of it.  But if one is merely examining various religions and then coming to a conclusion, that conclusion will be limited, it can be broken down, by argument, by superior knowledge.
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But if one gets an insight into the nature of the religious structures which man has invented, then the mind is immediately free of it.  If one understands the tyranny of one guru - they are tyrants, because they want power, position; they know; others do not know - then one has seen the tyranny of all gurus.  So one does not go from one guru to another. </DIV></TD></TR></TABLE></BODY></HTML>
